


Old Wounds

by OfEndlessWonder



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/F, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:08:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21796606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OfEndlessWonder/pseuds/OfEndlessWonder
Summary: 'In the moment, filled with so much anger towards Villanelle, seething with rage at being manipulated (mad at herself for not realising it), she’d been ready to walk away, to leave Villanelle and everything she represented behind.But now, lying here, in this hospital bed with her life in tatters, she can’t help but cry because she hadn’t been the one to walk away – Villanelle had, without looking back, had left her all alone, and Eve thinks that it’s that that hurts most of all.' An exploration of what could happen in the wake of 2x08.
Relationships: Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Comments: 26
Kudos: 139





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I am throwing my attempt at writing what could happen in season 3 into the ring.
> 
> I originally started writing this waaaaaay back in June, and then life happened and I'm just now getting back it. I'm hoping that starting to post it will give me the kick up the backside I need to finish this story, so please let me know what you think! Comments are always appreciated. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

_ They say don't open old wounds  
But this is still brand new  
And I've got nothing left to lose besides you  
And I've already lost you once  
What more could you do? _

* * *

She wakes in a hospital bed with a gasp of pain, and absolutely no recollection of how she got there.

Her side throbs, a pulsing kind of pain that she’s never felt before, so intense that it steals the breath from her lungs, and she squeezes her eyes shut, remembers the sound of a gunshot, cutting through the silent ruins, loud as thunder, remembers the pain, thinking ‘oh, she actually  _ did  _ it’, before crumbling to the floor.

It’s the last thing she recalls before blacking out – the sound of Villanelle walking away.

She can hear the beeping of machines, feels a needle in her hand, wonders just how bad the damage is and isn’t sure that she wants to look to find out.

“Oh, good.” A voice speaks, and Eve blinks her eyes open, jumps when she sees that Carolyn is sitting on a chair at the bottom of the bed, folding up the newspaper she’d been reading. The title is Italian, so Eve surmises that she’s still in Rome. “You’re awake.”

“What…” Her voice is raspy, unused, her mouth dry, and she wonders how long she’s been here, how many days it’s been since her whole life had gone to shit. “What happened?”

“Well, I was rather hoping that you’d be able to tell me that.” Carolyn is relaxed in her chair, and Eve wonders how long she’s been sitting there, if she’s waited there this whole time just so she’d be there when Eve woke up.

“I meant how did I get here? How did you find me?” She hadn’t been able to call for help before she fell into unconsciousness, had been convinced that she was going to die there, bleeding onto the ground of a place of such outstanding beauty.

She wonders if Villanelle had called Carolyn, hates the fact that her mind goes there, that she’s  _ still  _ thinking of Villanelle even after she’d put a bullet in her side.

“You have Kenny to thank for that,” Carolyn says, and Eve hopes that she doesn’t look disappointed (hates that she  _ is _ , that she’s disappointed that Villanelle had left her there to die, had walked away without a care, and god, had any of it been real?).

“Kenny?”

“Mm. When I told him that you’d walked away from the operation after our conversation, he grew very concerned about what might happen to you, so he tracked your phone. Some of our agents found you bleeding in the dirt. That was three days ago.”

“Three… three days?” She can’t believe that she’s been out for so long, and she wonders how far Villanelle could have gotten in that time – she’d be in the wind, untraceable, and Eve wonders if she’s seen the other woman for the last time. “Hugo?”

“In considerably worse shape than you, but he’ll live.” Eve is flooded with relief, glad that her decision to leave him hadn’t ended in disaster. “You’re going to make a full recovery. The doctors seemed amazed that the bullet managed to miss all of your internal organs. They called it a miracle.” Eve swallows, wonders if that had been intentional (it  _ must  _ have been, mustn’t it? Villanelle has good aim, and Eve wasn’t far away, and surely if she’d have wanted to cause Eve real, true damage, she’d have hit the mark), and tries not to squirm under Carolyn’s scrutinising gaze. “Odd that, isn’t it?

Eve chooses not to answer.

“What happened, Eve? Did the Twelve catch up with you?”

Eve wonders whether she should lie, or whether she should tell the truth. She thinks of Paris, of concealing the fact that she’d found Villanelle at her apartment, that she’d slid a knife into her stomach, thinks of how exhausting it had been to keep that covered up, and releases a long sigh.

“No, it was Villanelle.”

“She shot you?” Carolyn’s face is as carefully blank as always, giving nothing away.

“Yeah. She manipulated me into killing her handler from the Twelve,” Eve’s voice shakes as she remembers the weight of the axe in her hands, the feeling of it embedding in Raymond’s back, the sickening sound of it, the blood that had covered her hands, “and when I said I wasn’t going to run away with her she turned on me.”

She skips over some of the details – ‘I love you’ rings in her ears and she clenches her fists in the sheets that cover her – because they’re private, they’re things that she and Villanelle share only.

“That was  _ you _ ?” Carolyn looks like she doesn’t know whether to be impressed or horrified. “We found the body, but I assumed it was Villanelle, considering the… mess.” Her nose wrinkles, and Eve feels cold all over. 

“How did he know where she’d be?” Eve asks, because it was a question that had been weighing on her mind – he had waited for Villanelle outside of Eve’s hotel room, and she very much doubts that that had been a coincidence. 

“Perhaps he was tracking her.”

“Or perhaps someone told him where she was.” Eve stares at Carolyn, looking for some kind of reaction, some kind of confirmation. “Because it would be awfully convenient, wouldn’t it? Villanelle kills Aaron, and then Raymond kills Villanelle, and there’s no risk of word of our off-the-books mission getting out.” 

It’s truly a stroke of genius, Carolyn’s plan, pulling all of their strings behind the scenes, playing all of them like a master fiddler. The manipulation makes Eve sick, and she can’t believe that she’d looked up to Carolyn, admired her,  _ trusted  _ her. 

“It would’ve been very convenient indeed,” Carolyn acquises, as emotionless as ever, and Eve wonders how many years in this business it has taken for her to become so robotic. “But alas, that’s not quite what happened, is it?” 

“Did you  _ want _ her to die?” 

“It would’ve certainly been neater.”

“Even after all she did for us? Helping us?”

“Need I remind you that she is a murderer, Eve?” Carolyn’s voice is cold, her eyes hard. “One that you were chasing just a few weeks ago, until you decided that working with her would be a better option, allow you to get closer?” Eve bristles, feels like she’s been slapped. “She’s not an asset, she’s not someone you can control, someone you can handle. She’s nothing more than a loose end, a wild card, and both of our lives would be a hell of a lot easier if she were no longer in the picture.”

“Well, I don’t think you have to worry about that anymore,” Eve mutters, fingers brushing against the edges of her bandages. 

“Oh, I’m sure she will be back.” Carolyn says it was a certainty that Eve can’t quite muster. “The Twelve will be after her, but I’m not so sure they’ll catch up with her.” 

“What about me? Will they be after me?” 

“I doubt you’re on their radar, Eve, no offence. They will assume she killed Raymond, that she’s done with you after she tried to kill you, so… you should perhaps be more careful, but I don’t think you’re in any immediate danger, no.” 

Eve wonders if that’s true, doesn’t know if she quite believes it. 

“Are you going to look for her, too?” 

“Why, do you want your old job back?” Carolyn’s lips curve into a smile, but it isn’t a friendly one, and Eve clenches her jaw. 

“I don’t want anything to do with you.” She  _ means  _ it – she feels like Carolyn has been using her like a pawn this whole time, orchestrating her every move and making Eve think that it was all her idea. 

She hates it, hates  _ her _ , hates how perfectly poised she is, always so put together, the carelessness with which she carries out her ministrations. 

She’ll miss the job, she knows, but she won’t miss Carolyn, won’t miss second guessing herself, doubting herself, wondering what the true purpose of her mission actually was. 

“Very well.” Carolyn doesn’t look even remotely disappointed. “If you happen to change your mind…”

“I won’t.” 

Carolyn smiles like she thinks that’s a lie, but she doesn’t press, gathers up her belongings and leaves Eve alone with her thoughts. 

She thinks she should feel worse – she’s just lost her job, she’s lost Villanelle, and she’d nearly lost her life, but instead she just feels… empty. She tries to sleep, but when she closes her eyes all she sees is Raymond, all she feels is the axe in her hands, the blood spraying across her face, and he’d told her he had kids and oh, god, she’s going to be sick.

She is, bending over the bedpan that sits on the table nearby, bile burning at the back of her throat and making her eyes sting. 

A nurse is quick to check on her, fusses over her, taking her temperature and chattering away but Eve doesn’t listen to a word she says, feels numb, doesn’t even feel the nurse poking and prodding at her skin.

She changes the bandages, and Eve glances down and sucks in a sharp breath when she sees the wound – the edges are bruised, angry and dark, but the bullet hole itself is tiny, held closed by stitches, an angry red line marring her skin.

It’s low on her left side, and when she realises that it’s in almost the exact place that she’d stabbed Villanelle, she chokes on a laugh that quickly turns into a sob.

The nurse eyes her with some concern, asks Eve if she’s hurting, and Eve doesn’t know how to say that she feels like her heart is aching, like she’s been shattered to pieces that have been scattered apart, that even if she found them all and put them back together again, the cracks would never fully heal.

In the moment, filled with so much anger towards Villanelle, seething with rage at being manipulated (mad at  _ herself  _ for not realising it), she’d been ready to walk away, to leave Villanelle and everything she represented behind.

But now, lying here, in this hospital bed with her life in tatters, she can’t help but cry because she hadn’t been the one to walk away – Villanelle had, without looking back, had left her all alone, and Eve thinks that it’s that that hurts most of all.

//

It’s maddening, being stuck in that bed.

It hurts to move, to walk, and the first time she tries she nearly topples over, her legs wobbling under her weight.

She feels weak, useless, cooped up inside a hospital in a beautiful city that she’s quickly coming to hate, and she knows that she will never return to Rome, not with the memories it’s left her with.

And still, she can’t stop thinking about Villanelle.

She wonders where she is, where she’d gone, if she’d gone to Alaska without her, was holed up in a cabin somewhere wishing Eve was there at her side.

She wonders if she’d gone somewhere else, if there’s someone else warming her bed, if she’s already moved on and forgotten all about Eve, if she’d really meant to kill her and put an end to… whatever it was between them.

Four days ago she’d fucked Hugo with Villanelle’s voice in her ear, imagined it was her beneath her, instead, had come with Villanelle on her mind, had to bite back calling her name as lights had exploded behind her eyes.

Four days ago they’d been on the precipice of something more, and now that something more has been obliterated, smashed into smithereens.

She feels the loss more keenly than when Niko had left her, her  _ husband  _ for so many years, and god, there’s something really fucking wrong with her.

She should be furious that Villanelle had  _ shot  _ her, tried to kill her or, at the very least, left her for dead, not mourning the loss of an  _ assassin  _ from her life.

She thinks she needs a reality check, needs to re-evaluate her life, stop winding down this dark and deadly path that’s making her barely able to recognise herself anymore, but when she looks at herself in the mirror, the face that stares back at her is that of a murderer, and there’s blood on her hands, and she thinks it might be too late for her to go back to a nice, normal life.

She thinks she should try, but she doesn’t know how to go back, doesn’t know what normal even  _ is  _ anymore.

She wonders if she should start with her husband (ex-husband? She doesn’t even know anymore), who pokes his head through the door a couple of hours after Carolyn had left her alone with her thoughts.

“Eve?” He looks uncertain, awkward, as he hovers in the doorway, like he’s not sure how he’s supposed to act around her. “Can I come in?”

“Niko?” Eve blinks at him in surprise. “What are you doing here?”

“I got a call saying that my wife had been shot – I got on the first plane here.” He looks offended that she even has to ask. “How are you feeling?”

“Okay.” She eyes him as he steps into the room, frowns as she notices the bruise on the side of his face. “What happened to you?”

“Hm?”

“Your face.” She touches her own in the spot where his is blue, and he runs his fingers over it like he’d forgotten it was there.

“Oh. Well, I… I had a run-in with Villanelle.” He collapses onto the chair that Carolyn had been in earlier, looking absolutely exhausted, like he’s aged ten years in the last few weeks and Eve knows that it’s her fault, that she did this to him, that if she hadn’t gotten in so deep with Villanelle, they wouldn’t be here, looking at each other like they’re strangers.

“ _ When _ ?” Eve is horrified, wonders if Villanelle had sought him out after shooting her, taken her anger out on him, blamed him for Eve’s rejection.

“A few days ago. She came to ask for my shepherd’s pie recipe.” Eve can’t help but huff out a laugh, because that sounds like exactly the ridiculous kind of thing that Villanelle would do. “It’s not  _ funny _ , Eve,” Niko snaps, voice rough with anger. “She killed Gemma.”

“What?” Eve whispers, the words sending a shockwave through her, and Niko’s face is twisted with anguish and hatred, and Eve wonders if some of it is directed at her, because this is all her fault.

“She was helping me move some of my stuff into storage when Villanelle corned us. She had a knife, asked me if I loved Gemma, and I said no, because I didn’t. Then she asked me if I still loved you.”

“You said yes,” Eve says, her voice soft, and Niko’s face twists with pain as he nods.

“She didn’t like that very much.” Eve can imagine that only too well, sees Villanelle’s face twisted with anger, hears her screaming ‘you’re mine’ and swallows hard. “She hit me, knocked me out, and when I woke up… Gemma was dead. Head wrapped in a plastic bag, made to look like that goddamn snowglobe.”

“Snowglobe?”

“The Alaska one that used to live on the mantelpiece.”

Eve feels cold all over when he says that.

She remembers it – a souvenir he’d brought back from a trip he’d gone on with some friends a few years ago. She remembers the cabin within it, the trees around it, the dusting of snow on the roof, and feels her stomach churn, because she’d thought it was random, Villanelle choosing Alaska, but god, it’s all starting to make sense now.

She’d sought out Niko, eliminated Gemma, probably as… some kind of sick present to Eve, to isolate Niko from her even further than he already was, had seen the snowglobe and assumed Eve had been, assumed that she would be happy there, like the two of them would ever be able to have a normal life, a normal  _ relationship _ .

“They thought I killed her. I spent two days in a jail cell before they released me.”

“God, Niko, I… I’m so sorry.”

“I’d say it’s not your fault, but I think we’d both know that was a lie.” Eve winces at the tone of his voice. “She put you in here, didn’t she? Shot you?” Eve nods. “So do you see now, Eve, how stupid you were being, getting yourself involved in something like this? You could have been killed!”

“I didn’t realise you still cared.”

“Of course I still care, Eve.” He looks wounded, like she’d slapped him, and she knows he cares, she  _ does _ , but she wishes he didn’t because she doesn’t  _ deserve  _ him. “I never stopped caring about you. It was you who stopped caring about me.”

Eve stays silent, doesn’t deny it, because they both know if she did then she’d be lying.

“Do you finally see how dangerous she is?”

“I never forgot how dangerous she was.” Villanelle was always coiled like a snake, ready to strike, and though Eve had never expected that venom to be spat at her, she’d never been in denial that it was there, festering beneath the surface.

She just hadn’t cared.

“Will you just…  _ please  _ tell me that you’re done with this, now, Eve? That you’ll walk away, before she really does kill you, next time?”

“I… I don’t know what I’m going to do, Niko,” Eve says, and it’s honest, because she really  _ doesn’t  _ know where she goes from here, and she hates the disappointment she sees flicker across his face. “I just need some time to think. To recover.”

“She’s already taken so much from you, Eve,” Niko says, voice quiet, “don’t let her take your life, too.”

//

She spends three more days in the hospital before she’s allowed to go home.

It still hurts to walk and the flight home is painful, the seatbelt digging into her side, but she’s so relieved when she sees the London skyline as they’re descending, so glad to be back home and be out of that damn bed.

Because all she could do in that bed was sleep or think, except she couldn’t sleep because whenever she did she saw Raymond’s face or she was with Villanelle, and she was shooting her over and over again, or she was screaming ‘I love you’ at the top of her lungs and Eve just turned away, every single time.

So she’s cranky, and she can’t stop overthinking, and she just wishes that she could go back in time, that she’d listened to Kenny and never gone to Rome, that her hands were clean, and not stained with blood that only she could see.

Niko barely leaves her side the whole time, and it’s suffocating.

He fusses, and she hates it, because she doesn’t deserve it, doesn’t deserve him, and they’ve been home for barely five minutes before she snaps at him, and she feels like shit but at least he gives her a few precious moments alone, disappearing deeper into the house where their paths won’t cross.

She’s supposed to be trying to be normal, but she just doesn’t feel the way she should towards him, not anymore (doesn’t feel her heart trying to pound its way out of her chest whenever he’s near, her heart doesn’t skip a beat whenever she hears his voice, and she just doesn’t feel even an ounce of the overwhelming intoxicating attraction she’d felt for Villanelle for him, and she hates herself for it).

He’s happy she’s not going back to work, thinks that that will make her normal again, doesn’t want to lose her, but Eve thinks she is already lost, and nothing that he does will be able to bring it back.

It’s something only she can do alone, if she’s even able to at all.

“We need to talk,” she tells him, later that night, as he asks her what she wants for dinner.

“You want me to leave,” he sighs, looking defeated, and Eve thinks that this will really be it, this time, truly the end of their relationship, and it aches, knowing that he’ll never be enough for her.

“You deserve so much better than me, Niko,” Eve tells him, because he  _ does _ , he deserves a nice normal wife who doesn’t chase after gorgeous assassins.

“What if I don’t care about what I deserve? What if I only want you?”

“I don’t think you do,” Eve shakes her head, because she’d seen the disgust in his eyes when she’d crossed the line in Gemma’s bedroom, seen him looking at her like he barely recognised her. “And even if you did, I… I just don’t feel that way about you anymore.”

“Did you sleep with her?” Niko asks, point blank, and Eve looks away from his searching gaze.

“No, but I… I may as well have.” Eve remembers the sound of Villanelle’s moans, the way her breath had caught as she’d said Eve’s name when she came, and wishes she’d been able to see her, touch her, kiss her, that she had that memory and not just the echo of her voice.

“Do you love her?”

“I don’t know.”

“She killed your best friend. She  _ shot  _ you, Eve.”

“I know!” She practically screams it, the emotion rippling out of her like a tidal wave. “I know. And I don’t need you to tell me how fucked up it is that I ever had any feelings for her at all. Because I  _ know  _ it is, believe me. But that doesn’t mean I can just… turn it off.”

“I just don’t understand it.”

“Honestly? Neither do I.” She can’t explain the hypnotic hold Villanelle has on her, the way that they’re drawn together, the electricity that crackles between them whenever they’re in a room together. “But you deserve someone who only has eyes for you, Niko. And that’s just… it’s just not me.”

“We could try - ”

“I killed someone.” The words hang in the air between them for one long moment, and Eve knows, from the look on Niko’s face, that they’ve had their desired effect – to push him away, and ensure that he never came back. “In Rome.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not.” Eve shudders at the memory, feels like there’s still blood on her skin, hot and sticky and metallic. “I killed someone to protect her, and that’s why you and I can never go back to the way things were before.”

It doesn’t take him long to leave, after that.

She offers to move out, to leave him the house, but he declines, says that he doesn’t want to be surrounded by the memory of what they used to have.

Eve thinks it won’t be so bad for her but when he leaves, the door shutting with a click of finality behind him (she doesn’t think it will be long before she gets divorce papers through in the mail), she feels alone, the ghost of her past pressing in close.

It’s not just Niko’s ghost who lingers here – Villanelle’s does, too, and as she stands in the kitchen, heating up a ready meal in the microwave, Villanelle’s presence is all around her, suffocating her, and Eve wonders what she would do if she were here.

Wonders if she will ever come back to corner her in this kitchen for a third time, to finish what she started in those Roman ruins.

Eve hates herself for wishing that she would.


	2. Chapter 2

Villanelle’s coping mechanism involves fucking her way across Europe.

She’d always known that she wouldn’t be leaving Rome with MI6, had started building an escape plan almost as soon as she’d found out that she would be going. There had been a bag stashed away from watchful eyes, containing three different passports, and any documents she’d need to make her aliases (all unknown by the Twelve) look authentic, as well as cash in various currencies, and a number of weapons.

So, she’s fully prepared to leave the country after everything with Aaron goes to hell.

She just  _ hadn’t  _ been prepared for Eve to refuse to go with her.

She’d had a passport for Eve, too, and whenever she opens her bag and spots it within, she has to fight the urge not to stab a knife through the centre of it.

Whenever she blinks, Villanelle sees Eve walking away from her, hears ‘you don’t know what that means’ and it hurts even more than the stab wound Eve had left in her side.

Her rage hasn’t lessened, the farther she gets from Rome.

She’s angry at Eve, for not accepting Villanelle and the future that she had offered her, but she’s also angry at herself, for letting herself be so vulnerable, for letting her guard down, for letting Eve into her life and her heart and being utterly unprepared for the way Eve had spat in her face.

She thinks of Eve and all she sees is a body, crumpled on the floor, blood spilling forth from the bullet wound, perfectly placed to leave a matching scar on Eve’s skin, a mark that will tie them together forever, that will be a constant reminder of Villanelle, that will make Villanelle utterly inescapable, and she thinks that for Eve, that might be even more punishing than death.

Villanelle is sure that Eve isn’t dead.

The shot had been clean, the bullet should have been through-and-through, not hitting any major organs (much like the knife Eve had stuck inside of her, though that had been more sheer dumb luck than actual skill), and the only real danger would have been blood loss.

But she’d called the paramedics as soon as she’d been out of the ruins, and Villanelle wouldn’t be surprised if MI6 had stepped in before even they’d gotten there.

She didn’t think for a moment that Carolyn would have let Eve slip away so easily.

Not after she’d spent so long trying to twist her into something she could use.

Villanelle is angry at Carolyn, too. Not for using Villanelle, because she’s used to it, has been used her entire life – but for using Eve, for manipulating her, and Villanelle wonders, sometimes, if things would have turned out differently, if Eve hadn’t already had her trust broken by someone, feels like the gun had been the final straw.

She leaves Rome and travels north, winds her way through Italy on trains, stares out of the window at the landscape flashing by and wonders what she’s going to do next.

She’s alone, really, truly alone, for the first time in a long time – the first time since she’d landed herself in prison after killing Anna’s husband, since Konstantin had pulled her out and given her a new purpose in life.

But now he’s gone (‘you’re not my family’ rings in her ears and it makes her blood boil, her hands clenching into fists, because he was the closest thing she’d  _ had  _ to family in a really long time, and had he ever really cared?).

He’s gone, and Eve is gone, and Villanelle doesn’t know if she’ll ever see her again.

(She thinks she will, because there’s something inevitable about them, some irresistible pull that neither of them can resist, and even now, after everything, Villanelle feels it, tugging at her gut, a voice in her mind telling her to go back to Rome, to find Eve in the hospital and bring her flowers, to tell her that she was sorry and that she would try and be better).

So, she travels north into Austria, pauses in Vienna, in the place where this had all began – she knows that it was the murder here that had set her and Eve on their collision course, thinks it might be a good place to lie low and decide what to do next.

She spends her nights in clubs or bars, seeks out women with long, dark hair, seduces them with ease, lets them invite her back to their hotel rooms and fucks them in an attempt to forget, tries not to call them Eve even though when she closes her eyes Eve is all that she sees.

She spends a week in Vienna before she moves on, wary of spending too much time in one place, because she knows the Twelve will be after her.

She suspects that Carolyn had something to do with Raymond catching up with her, but now that he’s dead, she knows that they will be coming, that she has pushed things too far, that they will want to put a stop to her.

She isn’t worried – she can look after herself – but she’d prefer if she could keep off their radar, keep them from catching up with her, is better on the offensive than the defensive.

Something that Konstantin said weighs heavily on her mind – he’d implied that she had family, still alive, somewhere, and it might have been bullshit but she thinks that it’s something she’d like to know for sure.

So she starts to make her way towards Russia, the country that she loathes, and all the terrible memories she has of the place.

Her mother had died when she was three, leaving her with an absent, drunk father who hadn’t cared whether Villanelle lived or died.

She’d looked after herself as best as she could for a child, and she hadn’t felt a thing when her father had gone out one night, too drunk to drive in a straight line, and never made it back home.

The orphanage hadn’t been pleasant, but it had taught her how to survive. She hadn’t had any friends, but even the biggest kids knew to leave her alone.

The one bright spot of her childhood, of Russia, had been Anna, the teacher who had made Villanelle think that maybe she wasn’t broken, that maybe she could feel things, after all.

It still hadn’t been enough, and Anna had been horrified by her, in the end. There had been nothing but hatred in her eyes when they’d met again, and a bullet to the brain had been more preferable to her than spending another second with Villanelle.

(She wonders if Eve will look at her the same way, when they next meet, if there will be only derision in her gaze, and not a shred of the history that they shared).

Villanelle lingers in Krakow, wonders if Eve had ever visited with her husband, wanders the grounds of the castle and gazes over at the city, wondering how different things would be if Eve were here at her side.

She hates that she keeps thinking about her, that Eve is never far from her mind, and shooting her was supposed to sever the bond between them but Villanelle thinks that it’s only made it stronger, on her end, at least, because Eve is everywhere she looks.

Russia isn’t Alaska, but if Villanelle closes her eyes as she watches the hills rolling past outside the train window, she can pretend. She can pretend that she and Eve are lost in the wilderness, in their cabin in the woods, with no-one else around for miles. She can imagine them curling up in-front of a roaring fire, eating shepherd’s pie, can imagine spreading Eve out on a bearskin rug and worshipping every inch of her skin like she’s longed to since the day their first met.

(Now she wonders if she’ll ever get to feel Eve’s skin under her fingertips again, whether she’ll ever know what Eve’s lips taste like, what she sounds like when she comes, if she’ll be loud or quiet, how many marks she would leave on Villanelle’s skin, but for now, her fantasies will have to do).

When she’d left Russia, she’d vowed to never come back, and yet she’s here again, only a few months since her last visit.

She doesn’t like the way being back here makes her feel, like she’s a child again, lost and alone. She walks through the streets like a ghost, letting memories of the past wash over her.

She passes her old school, and remembers meeting Anna for the first time, remembers how she’d taken her breath away. She’d bought her flowers, once, from the florist in the town centre, and there was the café where she’d sat and watched Anna’s husband, stalking him home through the streets and waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

Anna’s house is empty, a forlorn looking ‘for sale’ sign out front, and Villanelle can’t help but slip inside. It’s barely been touched since she was last here, Anna’s belongings still strewn about the place, and the only difference is the newly-painted wall, devoid of the blood spatter and Anna’s brain matter.

Villanelle decides to stay there, flits through the rooms like the ghost of her past, tries to drown her memories of Eve in a place so haunted by the only other woman Villanelle had ever loved.

It’s probably not her wisest decision – the Twelve know about Anna, after all – but she doesn’t think they’d come looking for her, will expect her to be living it up in a lavish hotel somewhere, not squatting in her ex-girlfriend’s house.

She still sleeps with a knife and a gun under her pillow.

The next day she heads for the library, which is tiny, the bookshelves covered in a fine layer of dust, and the whole place smells musty and disused. Villanelle isn’t really even sure what she’s looking for, and the librarian is unhelpful, and it takes all of her self-restraint not to reach across the desk and snap the elderly woman’s neck.

She hasn’t killed anyone since Aaron, but there isn’t that familiar itch under her skin, that urge to feel blood on her hands, to watch the life drain out of someone’s eyes, to be the last thing that they see.

She wonders if Eve would come and look for her, if Villanelle painted the way with a river of blood.

The library is small, but it does offer her access to birth and death records, and that’s where Villanelle begins.

She finds the record of her own birth relatively quickly, stares at the name Oksana Astankova and feels nothing but disconnect, because Oksana is dead to her now, the ghost of who she used to be. She’d never been weak but Oksana had been vulnerable, and Villanelle had only been glad to shed her old name and pick a new one, to sink into her new life with relish.

She finds the records of the deaths of both of her parents, too, and feels very little as she reads the words, but finding any relatives is harder work. She looks for her grandparents, who she’d never met, looks for aunts and uncles and cousins, spends days pouring over the records, building up her own family tree with the drive that she usually applies to researching and carrying out a kill.

She finds very little – those relatives she  _ does  _ discover are long dead, and it leaves her frustrated, makes her wonder if Konstantin had been lying, and if he was, if he’d made that throwaway comment just to send her down a winding path, to distract her, then she really  _ is _ going to kill him and his family in the most painful, drawn-out way possible.

She’s almost ready to give up when she finds something, after a week of searching – her father’s name on a birth certificate that does not belong to her.

_ Karolina Ivanov. _

Villanelle traces a finger over the name, let out a slow breath at the realisation that she has a half-sister, one that was hidden from her, born two years after Villanelle, around the time that her mother had started to grow sick.

She isn’t surprised that her father had an affair – he had many flaws, after all – and she wonders if Karolina is the only one or if there are more.

She searches for others, but finds nothing, focuses her search on Karolina, now that she knows her name.

Villanelle throws herself into the task of tracking her down with the laser-focus with which she plans and executes her murders, lets it occupy her mind and chase away thoughts of Eve.

She has a  _ sister _ .

And she’s going to find her.

// 

Recovering from a shooting is  _ boring _ .

Without Niko in the house, Eve spends her days alone, feels like a ghost in her own home, like she’s barely living, and if this is what her life is going to be like from now on, if this endless boredom is all she has to look forward to, then she almost wishes that Villanelle really had killed her. 

She wonders if this is how Villanelle felt every day, finds herself thinking of her speech at the AA meeting and thinks that maybe she really had meant it, after all.

Four days after returning from Rome, there’s a knock on her front door.

Eve hasn’t had a single visitor since she’s been back, and she’s wary as she approaches the front door, but she supposes that if it were Villanelle (she knows it’s not Villanelle), or someone else wishing her harm, that they’d probably just blast their way into her home.

She finds Kenny on the other side of the door, blinks at him, and the suitcase at his side, in surprise. 

“Can I… could I stay here? Just for a couple of days?” He asks, and Eve is almost relieved at the opportunity to change the monotony of her life.

“Of course.” She ushers him inside, and he’s awkward, hovering inside her kitchen as she makes them a pot of tea. “Is everything alright?”

“Yeah, I just… I couldn’t live there anymore. With her.” His jaw is clenched, and Eve wonders what  _ he  _ must feel like – Eve had been manipulated but she’s sure that Kenny has been, too, and he is Carolyn’s  _ son _ . “After Rome… I can’t do that anymore.” 

“I hear I have you to thank for saving my life.”

“What?” Kenny’s eyebrows scrunch in confusion.

“You found me, didn’t you? Tracked my phone?”

“Well, yeah, but… the paramedics were already with you by the time we got there.”

“What?” Eve’s voice is deathly quiet, her stomach twisting. “What do you mean?” 

“Exactly that. I found you, but I didn’t save you. They got an anonymous call from a pay phone not too far from the ruins.” 

Eve feels like she’s going to fall over, her knees wobbling, feeling weak, and she collapses back against the kitchen counter and lets it hold her up. 

“She… she called for help,” she whispers, and Kenny looks like he doesn’t know how to handle this situation. “She wasn’t trying to kill me.” 

“I’m guessing Carolyn wanted you to think that she did.” 

“She withheld that part of the story, yes.” Eve’s teeth are gritted, and she wonders when Carolyn’s manipulations are going to stop. “God knows why.”

“She probably didn’t want you to go after her.”

“She might not have tried to kill me, but she did  _ shoot _ me,” Eve points out. “I’m hardly going to run off into the sunset with her.” 

(Even though sometimes she does, imagines what could have been, if she’d have just gone with her, disappearing into the Alaskan wilderness – she wonders how long it would have been before things fell apart). 

“I’m sorry, by the way. About Rome. I should have told you what was going on.” 

“And I should have listened to you when you told me not to go,” Eve sighs, and runs a hand through her hair. “But the damage is done.” 

She shows him to the guest room, tells him to treat the house like it’s his own, and before she turns to give him some time to settle in her calls out to her.

“I know you probably don’t want to know, but I…” He trails off, worrying at his lower lip. “I know where she is.” 

Eve tries to keep her face neutral, like she doesn’t feel like the floor has just fallen out beneath her, like she’s not tumbling down, down the rabbit hole. 

“Roughly, anyway. I, um, I knew she was the one who called the paramedics, so I found the payphone. I thought it might be good to keep tabs on her, so I tracked her through CCTV.”

“Does your mother know about this?” Eve asks, voice strained, but Kenny is quick to shake his head.

“I didn’t tell her. And I’ve made sure she doesn’t have access to anything on my laptop. She has no idea I did it.”

“Can we keep it that way?” 

“Of course.” 

“Thank you.” Eve is flooded with gratitude for him, especially after she’d been so horrible to him. “I’m sorry I fired you.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” Eve shakes her head. “I was so preoccupied with Villanelle that I didn’t stop to think of the consequences, but you did. All you’ve ever done is look out for me, and I… I haven’t done the same.”

“You are now,” Kenny says, gesturing around the room. “That’s all that matters.” He pulls his laptop out of his bag, and Eve stares at it for one long moment. “Do you want to know?” He asks, seeing the look on her face, and Eve doesn’t  _ know _ . 

“I… I don’t think so,” she decides, because it’s too soon, the wounds are too fresh, for the both of them, and she doesn’t want their next meeting to end in the same disaster. “Not right now.”

“Okay,” Kenny nods. “Just let me know if you change your mind.”

// 

Karolina lived in Moscow.

Lived, because, as Villanelle discovers when she arrives in the capital, Karolina had died two weeks ago, murdered in her own home.

Villanelle finds the news article, wonders if it had something to do with her, because surely it couldn’t be a coincidence, that she finds out about Karolina’s existence only to discover that she was no longer breathing. 

There’s a picture of Karolina, and Villanelle doesn’t see any family resemblence – Karolina had had brown hair, and blue eyes, her skin a shade or two darker than Villanelle’s. She was pretty, had a nice smile, and the article mentions charity work and activity in the local community, that she had been well loved and Villanelle wonders if it had been an act, if Karolina had been like her, underneath the facade.

She wonders what Karolina’s mother had been like, if this is what VIllanelle could have been, if she’d grown up in a different environment, or if she would have always turned out this way. She wonders if Eve would like someone like Karolina, wonders if she were more like her sister then she and Eve wouldn’t be such an impossibility, that they could go to Alaska and settle down and never look back. 

The cause of death is listed as blunt force trauma, the article mentioning some trouble with her ex-boyfriend, and just like that, Villanelle has a new mission: discover what happened to Karolina, and avenge her death as necessary. 

She’s filled with restless energy, with the urge to do  _ something _ , the urge to kill, to snap a man’s neck and watch the life drain from his eyes. 

It’s cruel, to know of Karolina’s existence but not be able to meet her, and she wishes that Konstantin had never said anything at all. It makes her angry, and when the sun has gone down she stalks the dark city streets like a cat, looking (praying) for a fight. 

She finds one outside of a nightclub, a guy manhandling a woman who’s so inebriated she can barely walk, but she has enough sense to attempt to bat away his wandering hands as he drags her into a dimly lit alley. 

Villanelle draws her hood up over her head to obscure her features before she ducks after them, crackling with restless energy, fingers wrapped around a knife in her pocket. 

“Get off her,” Villanelle demands in clipped Russian, and when he turns and sees her standing in the mouth of the alley he laughs, eyes glinting with malice.

“You want to join in the fun, baby?” He asks, and Villanelle rolls her eyes, smirks at his look of surprise as she rushes towards him, and it’s too easy, to twist his arm behind him back and slam him against the wall hard enough to make his brain rattle around in his skull. 

“Get out of here,” she hisses to the girl, and she probably won’t remember any of this in the morning, stumbles away on too-high heels, and Villanelle waits until she’s out of sight before she twists the guy’s arm even further, knows that just a little bit more force will dislocate his shoulder. 

He cries out in pain, fights back, rears his head back into hers and Villanelle only just manages to lean away before he makes contact, laughing as she wrenches his shoulder until he screams, lets him fall to the floor, whimpering in pain.

It’s pathetic, and she’d wanted a fight, not  _ this _ , shoves him onto his back and presses her boot into the centre of his chest until he gasps, staring up at her with wide eyes.

“Please,” he says, and oh, she likes it when they beg. “Please, I won’t do it again, I - ”

“Oh, but you will,” Villanelle says, because she knows the type.

“I won’t, I swear!” She puts more of her weight on his chest, enjoying the fear she can see blooming in his eyes. “I swear! Please, please, somebody help me!” He screams that, and Villanelle kicks him in the side, winding him, glances over her shoulder but no-one is rushing to his rescue. “Please.” He’s crying now, and Villanelle curls her lip in distaste, not having nearly as much fun as she’d wanted. 

She gets some satisfaction from the terror on his face when she pulls out the knife, gets in his face as she slides it into his belly, in a place where she knows it’ll be slow and painful. 

But she still feels empty, even watching the life drain out of him, growls in frustration and kicks out at his corpse, careful not to get any blood on her shoes. 

She takes his phone and his wallet, makes it look like a robbery gone wrong, not wanting to draw any attention to herself if she can help it. 

She dumps the phone and empties the wallet of all its cash before she throws that away, too, and heads back to her hotel to retire for the night. It’s a hovel, but it’s cheap, and it gives her a view of Karolina’s apartment block opposite. 

She has a shower and washes the blood off of her hands, watches the water run red with nothing but mild disinterest, sighs and wonders when this monotony will end. 

(She knows when it will end – it will end when Eve comes back into her life, because Eve is like a splatter of colour on a grey canvas, a light where everything else is dull and boring, but Villanelle had walked away, and she doesn’t know if they can ever go back). 

Her sleep is fitful, and she’s in a bad mood when she wakes, sick of this hotel, of this country, of what her life had become and it was supposed to be  _ fun _ , getting her freedom, but it’s anything but. 

It isn’t hard to track down Karolina’s ex, and she follows him on his morning commute, tracking his movements, stalking him like she would a kill, learning his routine so she could determine the best time to strike. 

He works in an office block, and Villanelle finds a cafe across the street, slouches into a seat and stares out the window and tries to pretend that she’s not really in Moscow, that she’s really in Alaska, and Eve is by her side.

The fantasy isn’t perfect, but Villanelle doesn’t think that the reality would be, either. 

But in her mind she can pretend that she and Eve are together, that she hadn’t been rejected (it still stings, a deep, gaping wound that makes her seethe), that she hadn’t put a bullet in Eve’s side in the heat of the moment. 

She can pretend that things are normal, that they have a future, that there isn’t an abyss separating them that they might never be able to cross.

She wonders where Eve is now, if she’s back in London, back at MI6 and with her husband. That would be the easiest thing for her to do, Villanelle thinks, to go back to before, to pretend that Villanelle never came into her life.

It would be the easiest but Villanelle doesn’t know if Eve would be able to do it, not after everything. She’d been furious with Villanelle when she’d walked away but she’d also been furious with Carolyn, and Villanelle isn’t sure that she could go back to Niko after what she’d done to Gemma. 

She smirks at the memory, at the way she’d left her, wonders if Niko had been arrested and how he’d gotten out if he had. ‘An assassin is trying to steal my wife from me’ isn’t exactly a solid defence. 

It’s hard, fighting the urge to check up on Eve, and she’d thought it would grow easier, being away from her, the farther she got, the longer she spent away, but it wasn’t.

She finds Eve everywhere she goes, in everything she does, and she’s becoming harder and harder to ignore.

Villanelle thinks that something had changed within her, the day she’d met Eve. A switch had been flicked, a desire ignited, and try as she might, Villanelle can’t find the source to smother it.

She wishes that she could go back to before, when there hadn’t been a thing that she cared about, when there hadn’t been someone on her mind. She thought she’d loved Anna, but being apart from her was nothing compared to how she feels being away from Eve.

She wonders if Eve will come for her, if she’s already looking.

Wonders if she’ll work with MI6 to try and bring her down.

Wonders what a showdown between the two of them would be like.

Who would make it out alive. 

(Villanelle probably would, but she thinks if she had to kill Eve than a part of her would die, too).


End file.
